No apologies needed. I was jesting - had a friend lookingat her calendar and said how early Lent was this year. I have not looked so don't really know. I think I was lamentingthe loss of Christmas tide. The day after Christmas thetree is out on the curb for trash pickup. People in such ahurry, going no where. We need to stop and just enjoy,relax and take in the beauty. Christmas tide of course isthe time between Christmas day and Epiphany, when theOrthodox celebrate the gift giving, which makes moresense, in a way, since that is Magi's arrival (at leastin some sense for we do not know the exact days ofany of these things.)Lent - yes, the ashes on the forehead. I so rememberthe days, which are still around.Liturgy. A definition in theology was something akin to"A complexus of signs making the unseen, visible".Unfortunately long gone in many of the hierarchicalChurches, especially the Roman. They have denudedthe beauty they used to have in favor of simplicity, andas a result have lost a whole generation of believers.

• cynosure •

Meaning: 1. The North Star or Ursa Minor, its constellation. 2. Something that attracts attention by its brilliance. 3. Anything that provides guidance or leadership, a 'guiding star'.

Notes: Today's Good Word is one of the most graceful in the English language; use it for its sheer decorative effect in your conversations. Its only relative is cynosural, an adjective not quite as lovely as its mother. Thomas Carlyle wrote in The French Revolution (1837), "Meanwhile the fair young Queen, in her halls of state, walks like a goddess of Beauty, the cynosure of all eyes."

In Play: Cynosures first and foremost must be striking and stand out: "When Christ was born, Rome was the cynosure of the Western world." This implies that it was bright, brilliant, and widely imitated. Things smaller than Rome may be cynosures, too: "Alison Wonderland was the cynosure of the soiree from the moment she lilted into the room in her lustrous white gown hemmed with a striking furbelow."

Word History: The origin of this Good Word presents a stark contrast to its glitter and glamour. Cynosure is a hand-me-down from the French descendant of a Latin borrowing of Greek kynosoura "dog-tail," based on kuon, kynos "dog" + oura "tail", the Greek name of Ursa Minor. The Proto-Indo-European root kuon- made it to English as hound while Latin converted it to canis "dog", from which English snitched canine and canary. Yes, canary: canaries were named for their point of origin, the Canary Islands, which comes from the Latin Canariae Insulae "Dog Islands". (Our cynosure today is Mark Bailey, who suggested it and who is one of the select circle of Grand Panjandra in the Alpha Agora.)

Last edited by JaimeCole on Fri Oct 11, 2013 11:03 am, edited 1 time in total.